


True Love (If Such a Thing Exists)

by butterflyslinky



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Blood and Injury, Curse Breaking, Idiots in Love, M/M, Mentioned violence, Mildly Dubious Consent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-20
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-17 10:36:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29591520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/butterflyslinky/pseuds/butterflyslinky
Summary: Dean has been cursed, and Sam and Cas only have twenty-four hours to find out how to break it. The trouble is, the cure might not be something they can easily find.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 4
Kudos: 30





	True Love (If Such a Thing Exists)

Dean jumped down the fire escape and landed in the alley. Another day, another hunt, another chase. This time, it was a witch; pretty standard fare, nothing too difficult. Dean ran after her, down the darkened streets and alley, knowing that Sam would be around the corner to cut her off.

Sure enough, Sam appeared out of the darkness, catching the witch as she tried to slip down another alley. Dean raised his gun to shoot her down.

She turned sharply and raised her hand, shouting something in a language Dean didn’t recognize. Immediately, pain shot through Dean’s body and he crumpled to the ground. It felt like fire going through his veins, immobilizing him. Dean tried to scream but couldn’t get out a sound, choking on blood or maybe fire or…

“What did you do to him?!” Sam sounded enraged. Frantic.

“Oh, it won’t kill him,” the witch said. “At least...not yet.” There was a blast of magic above Dean as he choked again. “You have twenty-four hours to break the curse.”

Dean tried to reach out and grab her, but he couldn’t move an inch. He dimly saw the witch running away before the pain overtook him and he blacked out.

*

Sam carried Dean into the hotel room, his heart racing. Dean had lost consciousness and not woken up yet. Indeed, Dean would have looked dead if Sam couldn’t still pick up a pulse, slow and faint but definitely there. Sam lay his brother on one of the beds and stood there, watching him.

It was a curse; the witch had said as much. And Sam had little less than a day to figure out how to lift it. He had already searched Dean’s body and the surrounding area and hadn’t found a hex bag. The language the witch had used to cast the curse wasn’t Latin, but Sam was certain he could figure out what it was if he heard it again. Then again, he didn’t think the witch was going to come back.

He was going to need help with this. They were a fifteen-hour drive from the bunker, even at Dean’s usual driving speed, so Sam didn’t have as much equipment as he’d need to test the curse himself, and Sam wasn’t sure he had the expertise anyway.

The first call was to Cas. Because when shit was happening like this, the first person Sam wanted around was an angel.

“Sam.”

“Cas, Dean’s in trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“Some sort of curse...I don’t know what it is, but I only have one day to break it.”

“Where are you?”

“Atlanta...Georgia. I’ll text you the hotel.”

“I’ll be there in a minute.”

Sam hung up the phone and texted the coordinates. A few minutes later, there was a knock on the door and Sam hurried to let Cas in.

Cas immediately went to Dean, running a hand over him. “It’s a nasty curse,” Cas said. “I haven’t seen anything like it in centuries.”

“Can you break it?”

“Not with my powers, no.” Cas touched Dean’s forehead. Dean’s breathing evened out, though it didn’t seem to get stronger. “I can keep him stable for now, maybe buy us another day, but I can’t remove it entirely...you’ll need a witch for that.”

Sam sighed. “And we can’t leave until we’ve taken this witch down,” he said.

“If we can find her again, she should be able to remove it.”

“Right.” Sam looked at Dean. “I can’t leave him alone, though.”

“I’ll find the witch,” Cas said. “You can research the curse while I’m gone.”

“Okay.”

Cas stepped out of the hotel room and vanished. Sam sat down and pulled out his laptop, pulling up every resource he had on curses.

*

An hour later, Sam was growing more frantic. He hadn’t found any lore about a curse like this and he was quickly running out of options.

He glanced at his phone several times, debating with himself, before he finally picked it up and hit another contact.

“This is the King.”

“Crowley, I need help.”

“Moose! What’s wrong?”

“Dean’s been cursed...I can’t find anything helpful about it.”

“What kind of curse?”

“I don’t know, a witch curse!”

“Yes, I figured that. What did it do to him?”

“He...fell down in pain and then passed out...he hasn’t woken up yet and the witch said I only have twenty-four hours to break it and I’ve already lost two.”

“Ah.” Crowley was quiet for a moment. “Well, I suppose the first question is what I get out of helping you…”

“Anything.”

“Yes, I thought so...I’ll call that in later. Now, I assume you’ve tried everything obvious?”

“Obvious?”

“Yeah...you know. Purification, general counter-hexes, true love’s kiss...that sort of thing.”

“Um…” Sam thought back. “I did every counter-spell I know...none of it worked.” He paused. “Were you serious about true love’s kiss?”

“It’s been known to work...of course, I don’t think that brother of yours has a true love, but it’s worth trying, anyway.”

Sam put the phone on speaker and started typing. “So...true love’s first kiss…”

“Only has to be the first kiss between the two specific people involved.”

“Right.” Sam scanned the article. “A person who isn’t related by blood, who would give up everything and do anything to save the subject, who loves her enough to sacrifice his life, through Heaven or Hell?”

“That’s the one...rarely happens. Of course, if I come up with something easier to find, I’ll let you know.”

“Right, thanks,” Sam said, and hung up the phone, staring at the computer.

Crowley was right. There was no way Dean had a true love.

*

Cas got back near morning, looking extremely ruffled and rather annoyed. Sam looked up from his computer. “Did you find her?”

“Yes,” Cas said. “And I did get the answer to the curse...before I smote her.”

Sam flinched. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“She hurt Dean, and the method she gave for breaking the curse is impossible...she killed him.”

“Not yet.” Sam looked over at Dean, who was still breathing, at least. “We still have time.”

“She said that the only way to break the curse…”

“True love’s kiss,” Sam finished. “Yeah, I know.”

Cas nodded. “So unless you know someone who loves Dean to the point of sacrifice who hasn’t kissed him yet…”

“Besides me? Not a clue.” Sam sighed heavily. “But surely there’s...I don’t know, a spell or a beeper or something we can use to find Dean’s true love.”

“Maybe.” Cas sat down, looking at Dean, clearly thinking. “The surest way would be to find a Cupid...even if Dean isn’t on their list, they’d know if he has a true love.”

“Great,” Sam said. “How do we do that?”

“I’ll have to get a list...but if we know who’s slated to get hit, we can nab one.”

“And how are you going to get a list? You’re kind of persona non grata upstairs.”

“Don’t worry.” Cas was still looking at Dean, seemingly unaware that Sam was even in the room. “I’ll get that list...whatever it takes.” He got up and left again.

“Yeah, thanks,” Sam called to the empty room. He looked at the computer for another moment before getting up and taking Cas’s place by the bed. Dean slept on, pale, still, but alive. Sam had to hang onto that.

Dean was still alive.

*

Sam had fallen into a doze when there was another knock on the door. He jerked awake and went to answer it. Cas was there, his coat torn, his face and chest bloody, but clutched in his hand was a scroll.

“What happened to you?” Sam asked.

“I had to break into Heaven’s archives,” Cas said. “The other angels weren’t very happy about it...I had to fight my way through almost three dozen of them to get back here.”

“That’s not going to do you any favors trying to get back in with them.”

“I don’t care.” Cas stumbled to the table and opened the scroll. “Anyway, there’s a couple marked down to be dosed in an hour at the bar...if we’re quick, we should catch him.”

“Great.” Sam glanced at Dean. “Do you need me to come or…?”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Cas, you’re still bleeding. You should probably have backup. Besides, it’s not like Dean’s going anywhere.”

Cas sighed. “All right...but we’re just asking the question. There shouldn’t be a fight.”

“Shouldn’t be,” Sam said. “But there shouldn’t be a fight every time you talk to another angel, and yet…”

Cas looked down at himself. “Good point.”

*

The bar wasn’t too crowded; it was only two o’clock in the afternoon, after all. Sam checked the time obsessively; eleven of their precious twenty-four hours were already gone, and who knew how long it would take to find Dean’s true love, even when they had her name?

Cas was looking around the room, his eyes hard, but Sam could see the fear behind them. He understood; if they lost Dean now, to some random witch…

No. That wouldn’t happen. Even if Dean died, Sam would move Heaven, Hell, and everything in between to get him back, and he was sure Cas would join him in that.

“There,” Cas said, nodding. “That’s the mark.”

Sam looked across to the beautiful woman at the bar and nodded. He and Cas found a table near her, close enough to keep an eye out but not so close as to be creepy. Sam waved the waitress over and ordered a drink; Cas just kept staring at the mark.

“Dude,” Sam said. “Stop staring.”

“I have to see when the Cupid gets here.”

“You will,” Sam said. “But you might scare her off.”

Cas sighed and looked away from the woman, but his eyes kept flicking back to her. Sam tried not to fidget too much; they just had to wait.

Sure enough, nearly an hour later, a rather handsome man walked into the bar. Sam watched as the man headed to the bar and sat down a seat away from the woman. The waitress brushed past them and the two turned to look at each other, identical soppy expressions on their faces.

Cas stood up at once and strode across the bar as the waitress headed into the staff room. Sam got up and followed a moment later. When he got there, Cas already had the waitress pressed to the wall, his angel blade drawn.

“What do you want?” the waitress--no, the Cupid demanded. Sam spotted the bow on her wrist as she tried to push Cas away.

“I need to know someone’s true love,” Cas said. “And you will tell me.”

The Cupid looked between Sam and Cas. “Why?” she asked.

“It’s to lift a curse,” Sam said. “Can you identify a true love from a name, or do you need a picture?”

“I’ll need the picture.”

“Cas.”

Cas let go of the Cupid. Sam pulled one of Dean’s fake IDs out of his pocket and showed it to her. “Dean Winchester,” he said. “Who’s his true love?”

The Cupid stared at the picture for a while and blinked. “Really?” she said. “You had to go to all the trouble of tracking me down for this?”

“I mean…” Sam was confused. “I don’t think he’s ever been hit by one of you, but everyone he’s ever loved he’s already kissed and…”

“People can have more than one true love,” the Cupid said. “You travel through life, you change...you can find more than one person in life for that. And not everyone needs Cupid’s Bow to recognize love. In fact, most people don’t.” Her eyes moved to Cas. “And sometimes, we’re told to never shoot someone because their true love is so impossible...so forbidden...that Heaven would rather it never be realized.”

Cas stood stock still, shoulders slumped, and suddenly everything clicked.

“Wait...are you saying that Dean’s true love…”

“You really didn’t know?” the Cupid asked. “It’s obvious to everyone...it’s been on the books upstairs for years that Dean Winchester and the angel Castiel are the perfect match.” She shrugged. “So if you need true love’s kiss, that’s where you get it.” She pushed away from Cas. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”

Cas nodded and he and Sam stumbled out the back exit into the alley. As soon as they were clear, Sam turned to Cas. “Did you know?”

Cas was silent, staring straight ahead. “Cas, did you know?”

“...I suspected,” Cas said. “My...feelings for Dean...they’ve always been strong. But…”

“But what?”

“It’s like she said...it’s forbidden for an angel to love a human like that. And even if...even if I was human, Dean would never…”

“We’ll worry about what Dean feels about you later,” Sam said. “Right now, you have to go back and break this curse.”

“Breaking the curse means kissing him. I can’t...I won’t do that to him.”

“He’ll understand,” Sam said. “Once he knows it was the only way…”

Cas sighed. “All right,” he said. “But only because…”

“I know.”

*

_Dean was warm. Safe, at home in the bunker, in his room, reading. Everything was quiet, and he had time to rest._

_Someone knocked on his door. “Yeah?” Dean called._

_Cas came in, as awkward and strange as ever, and Dean couldn’t help but smile at him. “Hey, Cas.”_

_“Dean.” Cas sounded...strained. Maybe a bit nervous._

_“You okay?”_

_“Yes.” Cas stepped closer to the bed. “You’re dreaming.”_

_Dean’s heart sank. “Oh...should have figured.” His brow furrowed. “But if I’m dreaming, why are you here?”_

_“Angel, remember?” Cas looked more nervous. “The witch in Atlanta cursed you...I’ve dealt with her, but we need to break the curse in the next twelve hours.”_

_“Okay,” Dean said. “How?”_

_“The cure is true love’s kiss,” Cas said. “The first kiss from someone who truly loves you, enough to sacrifice everything for you...someone who isn’t your family.”_

_Dean snorted. “Well, good luck with that,” he said. “I burned all those bridges a long time ago. I mean...who’s left out there who loves me and I haven’t kissed?”_

_Cas just stared at him pointedly. Dean waited a moment, then realized._

_“Oh...Cas, no. You don’t have to...I know you don’t really want it, just…”_

_“Dean,” Cas said. “I do want it.”_

_They stared at each other for several long minutes. “So why haven’t you done it yet?” Dean asked._

_“I want your consent. I won’t kiss you if you don’t want me to.”_

_“Hey, if it’s a choice between kissing you and dying, I’ll take you.”_

_“It’s not just a kiss, Dean...it’s a kiss of true love. If I do this, we’ll have a stronger bond than before...and that will not stay secret for long.”_

_Dean thought about it. Cas was attractive, and had already given so much for Dean. Come to think on it, Dean had also given a lot for Cas. And now that it was spelled out, Dean could see it everywhere through their friendship; how Cas had saved him, how he had saved Cas, how every time it looked like they would kill each other, they could never quite manage it. And Dean realized now…_

_“Yes,” he said. “Yes, Cas...I want that. I think...it’s been there for a long time. I just didn’t see it until it was spelled out for me.”_

_Cas nodded and moved closer. Dean closed his eyes, ready...waiting._

_Cas took Dean in his arms and kissed him, and Dean could do nothing but kiss back, finally feeling complete._

Dean woke slowly, still feeling someone kissing him. He blinked awake and see Cas, the real Cas, above him, still holding onto Dean. Dean gasped, pulling back to take in deep lungfuls of air.

“Dean?” Sam came hurrying across the motel room. “Dean, are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Dean gasped. “Yeah, I’m awesome.” He looked back at Cas. “So...that was really you. In my dream.”

“Yes,” Cas said. “I told you...I wouldn’t do that without your consent.”

“And...all that crap about true love? Is that true too?”

“Yes...we specifically tracked down a Cupid and made sure of it.”

Dean blinked, trying to comprehend it all. The idea of him having a true love was laughable, the idea of it being Cas more so, and yet…

Sam coughed delicately. “I’ll, uh, leave you two alone,” he said. “It looks like you’ve got a lot to talk about.” Sam turned and fled the room.

“Get me pie!” Dean yelled after him.

Cas shifted a bit uncomfortably. “So…”

“So.” Dean took a deep breath. “If you’re my true love, why didn’t you say anything before?”

“Because it’s not done,” Cas said. “I’m an angel...you’re a human. This...this isn’t supposed to happen.”

“But it has. You’re my true love, Cas...and now that we know, it’s not like we can ignore it.”

“No.” Cas stared straight ahead. “We can’t...and I don’t want to.”

“I don’t either,” Dean said. “So Heaven…”

“Screw Heaven.” Cas looked deep into Dean’s eyes. “I love you...enough to fight them. Every time.”

Dean smiled. “I love you too, Cas.”


End file.
